Sue's Kid
by moonswirl
Summary: Gleekathon, day one hundred and ninety-five: After the argument between Sue and Will, Brittany goes in to pick up the pieces.


_Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a second cycle, and then a third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eigth cycle, and ninth cycle._

_Now comes the tenth cycle. And since that feels like it should be special, this is what I'm doing: Cycle 10 will feature my top 15 of some favorite things from Glee. Characters, ships, friends... It will be daily ficlets for numbers 15 down to 2, but number 1 will be a 7-chapter story :) Here we go!_  
_**Coming in at number ten!**_

* * *

**"Sue's Kid"  
Sue & Brittany  
Sequel to "The Sylvesters", "With my Little eye", "The Smell of Failure", "My Girl in Blue", and "Vitamin Crash"**

When the names were called out for "Sue's Kids" to take their place, Brittany had sat, and she had waited for her turn. She'd watched her friends get called away… and not her. She didn't worry, not really. She knew what her mother had told her, time and again, that she would sometimes have to do things, but that there was always a reason… She wasn't told what this reason was, but she knew it was there, so that was good enough for now. She trusted her.

It wasn't like she didn't get to see them anymore. They had class, breaks… covert jam sessions… Still, she did miss them. She wasn't sure if her mother was supposed to know that though, and when she called both him and Puck into her office, she was focused so hard on that thought that when her mother called her name, she just looked at her, hoping she couldn't possibly read through her… She wasn't sure how that looked to her…

Plus, there was a bit of confusion on another matter, primarily being quiet as her mother went on about her 'Dutch heritage.' Her mother never brought up anything to do with her father, or her relation to Brittany… For a second there, she wondered if she'd slip… It took everything in her not to go 'Careful, he can hear you.' She didn't slip, of course. Her mother was a rock that way.

So now she was on her mother's team… She liked it that way. She liked being on the Cheerios, they were together there. And if she was going to run Glee Club with Mr. Schuester, Brittany wanted to be with her there, too. So now she was; all seemed right.

She stood there frozen for a while as she watched her mother and Mr. Schuester arguing. She could swear she could feel the moment where Mr. Schuester's words had dealt a real, painful blow to her mother.

He'd said she'd be alone.

She couldn't explain everything about her, didn't understand it all, either. But there were the things she knew, like how she both never really dated, and never really spoke of her father… Somehow that afternoon she'd looked at her, before following the rest of the club out of the auditorium, and she'd added two and two and actually gotten to four. It was a fragile kind of discovery, when put together in a mind like hers, but it was there.

That evening, after dinner, and homework, she went to find something in the box she kept hidden under a floorboard, under her bed, and went to find her mother in her office. She gave the door a knock and waited for her to get the okay. When she did, she walked in. her mother didn't look up from her work. This was another thing she knew about her: She wasn't actually working. Brittany felt like they were back in her office at McKinley as she took a seat across from her. As she waited for her mother to finally address her, she looked down to the thing in her hand.

It was the one picture she had. She didn't even remember how she'd found it, just that she had. She'd been eight years old at the time, and up until then she had never seen any kind of representation of her father that would guarantee he did actually exist beyond the fact that she herself existed. She hadn't known it was him, not when she'd first found it. All she knew was that there was this picture of a man, posing for the portrait, while he and her mother sat at a restaurant table. They both looked so happy… and she loved seeing her mother's smile… And then her grandfather, who was babysitting her that day, had seen the picture and told her…

"That's your father; that's my son, Joe."

He'd suggested she keep the picture hidden away, so she had, all these years. She would pull it out and stare at it sometimes. She could see the resemblance, for sure… the eyes, the ones she had, her grandfather had, and… her father… She'd never shown it to her mother.

"What do you have there?" Her mother's voice brought her back. She hesitated; she didn't want to let it leave her grasp. After a moment, she just turned it over for her to see. When she looked up, her mother was just sitting there, staring.

"Where'd you get that?" she asked, sounding like there were a good number of emotions fighting for expression. Brittany hesitated again.

"I don't remember," she admitted. "Is he why you were upset today?"

"I wasn't…" Sue started defensively, sitting back in her chair. Looking in those eyes though, she quieted up, thinking. Brittany put her hands and her picture back in her lap. "What do you want me to say?" Brittany didn't know how to answer that… didn't have to. "Look, your father, he…" She stopped. She didn't know whether to be brutally honest with her, or to try and embellish things. On any other occasion she would have chosen the first option in a heartbeat, no need to think. But Brittany didn't deserve the harsh truth… She did, Joe did. He'd been the one to leave, but she'd been the one who'd never told him about his daughter, even when they'd run into each other. Even good Grandpa Joseph, estranged from his son, had never told him about her. "Your father…" Sue started again, only to be interrupted.

"Was he nice?" Brittany asked. All at once, she could see a hundred of Joe's smiles in her mind. Despite how things had ended, it would have been a lie to say no.

"Yeah, he was a good guy…" she paused. "Veterinarian," she volunteered the information, which got her daughter smiling.

No… She had to choose option two, give her something good to hang on to. She knew she had her failings as a mother; making her daughter sad about her lack of a father would not be one of them.

"I know it's hard to understand why he's not here then…" Brittany didn't say anything, but she was listening. "There isn't… There's no real answer. Sometimes these things happen." She paused again. "But you know that doesn't mean I don't… You know I love you, right?" Brittany smiled and nodded. "That's what you remember, alright?"

"Okay?" she stood, then, "Love you, too." She left the office and went to put the picture away.

Sue sighed. Some days she sat in that office, looking at all her trophies, and they didn't matter, because she knew her great achievement was her blue-eyed girl.

THE END


End file.
